WATCH: Tennessee fans taunt Florida players following post game fight
The Florida–Tennessee game has always been one of the biggest rivalries in college sports and Wednesday night’s basketball game was heated throughout. Technical fouls were issued to both teams for a verbal exchange between two players. Another technical foul was issued to Tennessee later in the game for shoving a Florida player.
Then in the postgame handshake line, it wasn’t pretty as both teams had to be separated. Florida’s Tyree Appleby appeared to be one of the most fired up of the Gators basketball players. Tennessee players and fans were then seen doing the Gator Chomp at Florida’s players as they were leaving the floor, following the 78-71 win for the Vols.
With the win, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes is now 8-2 against Florida. The Volunteers overcame a 13-point deficit for the comeback victory.
So clearly there is no love lost between both teams. Tensions boiling over today likely had a lot to do with the incident in last year’s version of Florida-Tennessee.
Florida’s Omar Payne hit Tennessee’s John Fulkerson with one of the nastiest elbows in college basketball history.
What a vicious elbow. Wednesday night’s game just added even more spice to one of the most heated rivalries in college sports.
Florida performed admirably to even keep the game close, considering both of their centers were out: Colin Castleton was out with a shoulder injury and Jason Jitoboh exited late in the first half of Wednesday night’s game, after he took an inadvertent hand to the face from Olivier Nkamhoua.
Tennessee has now won seven of its last eight matchups against Florida. The Gators were upset on Dec. 6 by Texas Southern in one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history–69-54.
Tennessee now sits at (14-5 overall, 5-3 in the SEC), and Florida falls to 12-8 overall, 3-5 in the SEC).